Nine months before giving birth in a public rest room and dumping her newborn in the trash, Susan Jeannie Chiniewicz was having an affair, District Attorney Bill Turner told jurors Tuesday as testimony started in the 36-year-old's murder trial.
Her husband -- who she already had three children with -- had undergone a vasectomy, making it unlikely he could conceive another child, Turner said during opening statements.
So when Chiniewicz found herself pregnant again, Turner said, the suburban Dallas resident decided to deny the child's existence -- wearing baggy clothes, telling some acquaintances she had a fibroid tumor and telling her husband that her belly's growth was the result of an ovarian cyst.
"It is clear that Baby Joseph was unwanted from the start, was an embarrassment from the start," Turner said. "He was a threat to her lifestyle until his death."
Defense attorneys Jim James and Cameron Reynolds declined Tuesday to immediately give an opening statement for Chiniewicz, a respected business owner who was active in The Colony's chamber of commerce. They will have another opportunity to outline their case after prosecutors finish calling witnesses.
Brazos County investigators dubbed the child "Baby Joseph" after responding to the Texas World Speedway south of College Station in October 2005. Janitor Jose Tirado found the 7-pound infant in a large trash bin as he was cleaning rest rooms following a weekend motorcycle-racing event, he testified.
Gruesome photos of the infant -- waste paper strewn around his curled, lifeless body as he lay in a black plastic garbage bag outside the rest room -- were displayed to jurors as Tirado was called to testify.
"I felt it was too heavy," Tirado said through a Spanish interpreter as he stepped down from the witness stand to demonstrate reaching for the bottom of the garbage bag that day. "I felt something soft. I thought I should check it out [so] I moved the papers and I saw the child."
Prosecutors also showed jurors during Tirado's testimony a photo of a nearby toilet with what appeared to be lines of dried blood running down its front.
Chiniewicz was indicted for capital murder, which is punishable by life in prison or lethal injection. However, prosecutors opted Tuesday to instead charge her with first-degree felony murder, which carries a punishment range of between five and 99 years or life in prison.
If she is found guilty and has no prior felony convictions, Chiniewicz could be eligible for probation. Prosecutors deferred comment until after the trial as to why they decided to pursue the lesser charge.
During his opening statement, Turner outlined what he called the short, tragic life of Baby Joseph and asked jurors to put themselves in Chiniewicz's state of mind -- remembering her constant denials.
"Babies don't just appear in trash barrels," Turner said. "They don't have the strength to get there. Somehow, they have to get there. They have to depend on an adult."
Investigators began focusing on Chiniewicz about a week after the child was discovered, when she called a Sheriff's Office dispatcher. She wanted them to know that she had been bleeding heavily from her period that day and might have made a mess in the bathroom, dispatcher Sherry Jones testified.
"I was kind of like, 'What?'" Jones told jurors. "I asked her what this had to do with the baby. She said, 'Nothing, really.'"
The woman then asked if authorities knew who the baby belonged to before hanging up, Jones said, explaining that she felt the conversation was strange enough to pass it on to investigators.
When contacted by detectives, Chiniewicz continued to deny having a baby, prosecutors said. But she changed her story seven months later, they said, when she was confronted with a DNA test proving she was the mother. That's when, Turner said, the woman "unveiled plan B" -- stating that she had been raped and the baby was born dead.
Turner and fellow prosecutor Andrea James said Tuesday that the child was born with group B strep, an infection that can be life-threatening for newborns. But it is treatable by a physician, they said.
They called to the witness stand officials with Texas World Speedway and the Central Motorcycle Roadracing Association, both of whom said there were multiple paramedics and volunteers at the track that day who could have helped anyone experiencing a medical emergency. Prosecutors also called Chiniewicz's gynecologist and several medical professionals who said she didn't have any doctor's visits for the duration of 2005, when she would have been pregnant.
Prosecutors told jurors during opening statements that later in the trial they will hear from a pathologist who will testify that the baby was born alive and could have survived.
According to the indictment, which was read aloud to jurors just before opening statements Tuesday, Chiniewicz is accused of murder by either smothering the child, allowing it to drown in the toilet or abandoning it alive in the trash -- where it might have succumbed to the elements -- instead of seeking medical attention.
"He had to be dependent on the person with the moral and legal obligation to get him that help," Turner said. "Gulping, gasping for air, Baby Joseph died in the hands of his mother in a rest room."
Testimony is expected to continue at 9 a.m. Wednesday in the 85th District Courtroom. Prosecutors told Judge J.D. Langley on Tuesday afternoon that their first witness of the day will be David Bayliss, a chamber of commerce member in The Colony who prosecutors say is the father of the child.
• Craig Kapitan's e-mail address is craig.kapitan@theeagle.com.
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